Step 6: Engage in the gender-learning needs assessment

Prior to developing training, gender practitioners should conduct a gender-learning needs assessment aiming at assessing participants’ knowledge of gender issues and concepts, to better tailor training to their identified needs.

Gender-learning needs assessment should particularly focus on assessing the ‘problems’, such as individual resistance or organisational weaknesses, and on developing tackling strategies. Commissioning authorities should support this exercise by actively encouraging staff to participate in and providing the trainers with relevant information on the organisation’s work and procedures.

This learning assessment should cover the following topics, related to both participants and the organisation:

Participants background and current area of work

Participants’ background and current area of work

Collecting information on participants’ sex, position, area of work in the organisation and their professional background will be useful to tailor the examples or case studies that will be used during training;

Participants familiarity with gender related theories and key concepts

Participants’ familiarity with gender-related theories and key concepts

Participants might possess previous knowledge of gender issues and already be familiar with some gender-related concepts. Assessing their pre-understanding of key concepts might be useful to better address these issues and provide them with more useful training.

Participants expectations and motivation to attend training

Participants’ expectations and motivation to attend training

It is important to offer participants the opportunity to voice their expectations and/or motivations to undertake gender-equality training. Participants should be able to explain the problems they face in implementing gender mainstreaming in their daily work.

Programmes of the organisation

Programmes of the organisation

To better tailor the training, and avoid generic training that will not meet the organisation’s and participants’ specific needs, gender practitioner should have access to the organisation programming plan and other documents. The organisation should facilitate trainer’s access to useful documentation to prepare the training course.

Current level of implementation of gender mainstreaming by the organisation

Current level of implementation of gender mainstreaming by the organisation

The programmes where gender has been explicitly mainstreamed should be assessed to identify challenges and opportunities